Donya-ye Computer va Ertebatat (World of Computer and Communication): Mohammad Mehdi Molayi, Mahmud Orujzadeh: Iranian old web visitors remember once the number of Persian language websites covering news about Iran were so few. From then on it is 6 or 7 years and during this period a lot of Persian websites have been entered the virtual world, therefore; these days Iranian operators are facing a lot of Persian contexts in the internet.

Mohammad Mehdi Molayi, Mahmud Orujzadeh: Iranian old web visitors remember once the number of Persian language websites covering news about Iran were so few. From then on it is 6 or 7 years and during this period a lot of Persian websites have been entered the virtual world, therefore; these days Iranian operators are facing a lot of Persian contexts in the internet. During these days a lot of websites have been started up beside many websites could not stay for a long time and finished their activities. One of the old websites that is still active after 6 years and is acting even stronger comparing to beginning years is www.pendar.net. Pendar is focusing on cultural, artistic and literary subjects. Pendar is a cultural institute now and has expanded the scope of activities out of Persian websites world.

Examination of Pendar’s experience is important in two aspects. One aspect is review of memories of start up and continuing the activities of one of the Old Persian websites as a part of history of Persian website. The second aspect is that Pendar as a model can be used for other similar internet complexes, most of them had a good start but could not stay for long. Nima Afshar Naderi, 25 year old founder and manager of Pendar website, and Amin Rajaee, 26 year old technical manager of the website are computer engineering graduated. We are going to have a chat with them about their 6 years experience in Pendar.

It is better to start with the history. When the idea of starting up Pendar has been formed?
Nima- After acquainting with internet in 1998 together with some of my friends, we have decided to start an internet monthly media named Bamdad. At those times the cost of connecting to internet was high and I could not be connected myself. I was the editor of the internet magazine, I used to compile the context and give it to a friend of mine, Payam Mo’in Afshari, who had the possibility to connect to internet in their company and had enough knowledge in this regard those times. He provided the html files and uploaded on the internet. At the same time in 1999 the Assembly had approved necessity of license for internet magazines. Considering this rule and few number of internet magazines, we thought that it is better to work more formally.

How many visitors you had at the beginning?
Nima- I remember that I have ordered an advertisement to Asr-e Azadegan newspaper. This advertisement resulted in about 70 visitors a day. In normal days we had about 30 to 40 visitors.

How you have come from that Internet magazine to pendar.net? How much was the start up costs?
Nima- As I told after approving this rule we decided to close Bamdad. After a while me and my friends have spoken about Pendar. I remember that I have registered Pendar’s domain with the money I have been given in New Year as present- eydi. Domain registration was 250000 Rls. Then we have discussed with Morva and they provided us hosting. We have paid for domain registration but not for hosting and programming due to relations.

When Pendar had its official start on the internet?
Nima- Domain registration was on May 1999. We have started officially on 23rd of May because of those days’ atmosphere- presidential election! We have started with some poems and stories in the website.

What exactly did you do in Pendar? What was your primal plan and definition?
Nima- We have registered the domain but we did not know what we want to do. At first we were buying good non-political magazines and scanned proper texts and uploaded in the website. We have continued this way until November. Then Fereydun Moshiri has died and we have published the first Pendar news. After that we had some conversations for Pendar. We had conversations with Khosro Sinayi, movie director, Ali Tajvidi, Shiva Arastuyi, author, and some other persons.

As I remember gooya.com was doing the same thing at the beginning.
Nima- Yes, Gooya was doing it in political field.

What were other Persian websites at those times?
Nima- At those times it was Iranian.com. I did not know Gooya either.

What was the first policy of this work? What kind of news you were going to cover?
Nima- Pendar was not going to be political, but the identity of Pendar was not clear at the beginning and has been formed gradually.

Still sometimes it seems that Pendar is confused and it is not clear it wants to be artistic or social or literary or all of them.
Nima- maybe, I have defined Pendar as: a media that can be about everything except for policy and immortalities.

Pendar is mostly working on cultural- artistic fields. Which websites were active in these fields then and which websites started later?
Nima- At those times there was no specific website. There were only some personal websites, for example a painter had a website. Little by little websites as iranactor.com and 30nama.com have been started who could be our rivals, but still I can say Pendar has no similar. In the first visit card of Pendar it was written “a website for educated Iranians,” we considered a website that intellectuals visit it every morning and visit other places through it. Although at the moment internet is so developed and expanded that we can not gain such goal. I can claim that we are cultural- artistic now. We like to cover social subjects but we have not the possibility yet.

Did you have a foreign model that you wanted to have the Persian version of it?
Nima- not in such a way, when we have stated Pendar I did not know many foreign websites. At the same time I can not claim that all idea of Pendar was ours. We did not imitate from a specific model, each part of it came from somewhere. If I want to mention a special website in news we wanted to be like CHN but with cultural and artistic subject and also with the same number of human resources. In form we are similar to slate. Until now this was our possibilities.

In the starting years how much of your job was production and how much you were publishing print media contexts?
Nima- We were producing in cinema, literature and music. We were publishing 2-3 texts a day. Most of the news were picture not font, that is; we had to select a text and scan it or type it and picture it and then upload it on the website. 80% of the context was others’ production, about 10% were Pendar’s production and about 10% were sent to us.

Who were Pendar team those days?
Nima- Me and Ahmad Anvari. Then Amin Rajaee joined us. Sara Hasani and Sara Peimanpoor have also helped Pendar a lot.

How Amin have joined. Amin maybe it is better that you tell it to us.
Amin- When Nima were publishing Bamdad I had a literary magazine. I have become acquaintance with Nima by a friend. Then I did not have a domain and I did not know how to own one. One of my friends introduced me to Nima, a website owner. As a result of our acquaintance my literary magazine transferred from genicities yahoo to Pendar. Then little by little my cooperation with Pendar increased and I have founded some parts of the website. And gradually I have moved to technical department.

How was technical situation of Pendar those days?
Amin- Pendar was dynamic from the very first days. Ahmad Anvari had programmed it in php language. It was a simple program that did not support Persian texts. I have changed a part of the program and made a part of it Persian. Then we concluded that this program can not satisfy Pendar requirements. So we changed the website to html. Then our website was static and we programmed it according to the requirements and have added other parts as society, picture gallery, etc.

Which parts were most welcomed?
Nima- At that time Ardeshir Rostami’s works which were published in most of the newspapers those times, had a lot of fans. Also our postal cards were welcomed nicely and increased our visitors. These cards were given to Pendar by Mr. Mohammad Tehrani, manager of Kargah website. In addition news about specific people like Farhad who were not covered elsewhere were welcomed. The societies had a lot of fans, too.

How many times Pendar’s tendencies have been changed considering context and structure?
Nima- Tendencies are not changed. But managers become grownups and therefore their points of views have changed. For example amusing parts have been decreased. As we had no budget, we could not plan for the tendencies.

You have mentioned budget, so let’s talk about something which is not irrelevant. Pendar has changed from a website to an institute. It means that you have started with a website and now you have an institute that does business. How it happened? Did you plan for it or not?
Nima- We did not plan for it. The website has stated up and it became our main occupation spending most of the day for it. Me and Amin were spending most of our time for Pendar. It was our job and hobby.
Amin- The changes have been done in two phases. We have registered the institute in phase one and in the next phase we started serious business. Phase one was coinciding when it was approved that internet media has to have a license. Then to be cautious we decided to be dependant to an official center. So Cultural- artistic institute of Pendar registered and Pendar website became dependant to it. This happened in 2002. But for so long we did not do anything in the institute and our main job was pendar.net.
Nima- The second phase occurred in 2003. Before registering the institute we did some internet projects base upon validity of Pendar. Pendar was our activities’ window that provided us validity. Pendar became our main job. Our activities have been decreased for a while due to disappointment and tiredness. We concluded to change. This change first occurred in appearance of the website. Then we wanted to choose a program to manage the context of the website. At those times there were programs like MT and ESP Rider. We have tested them but they were not appropriate. So we came to the point of programming ourselves. The turning point of Pendar was 2003 when we decided to program ourselves.
Amin- We have decided and examined needs and programmed. Then I had already graduated from software engineering and I enjoyed it a lot. Effected by that we have programmed the software!
Nima- Our job has been finished in 2004 and we have used it in Pendar. Then gradually we have completed the software and got some website projects. This way Pendar had income by which the primary budget for starting an office was prepared. We have started from zero and came to point of makimg money. Now after 5-6 years it is only some months that we have salaries from our complex.

Didn’t you have income from pendar.net itself? For example from advertisement?
Nima- There was some. But we never went to get advertisement seriously. I remember that once I went to a famous music production institute and they were so pessimistic that they had thrown me out! At the same time if I as the editor of the website went to get news it would be expected to publish ordered news. I did not want to support such assumption so I never went for advertisements seriously. But we had some advertisements.

It seems that since pendar institute has been founded you are spending more time for business and pay less attention to pendar.net. It is some months that Pendar is updated less. Is business the reason?
Nima- That is right. Pendar.net has been updated less for a while. Doing business has helped us. Even once we had a good income a part it has been spent for pendar.net that is paying our writers. We paid for the conversations. Therefore commercial activities have helped pendar.net lasting. I accept that our production is decreased comparing to some months ago but the reason is not commercial activities; the reason is projects on new website that we are working on it.

Do you accept that Pendar sometimes is close to a personal media?
Niam- no, it happened sometimes that I had not work on those things I preferred. Although my signature is at the bottom of some pages but you could not say that it is personal.

Sometimes it was more than that. It seemed that in the general procedure and policies, a personal point of view were dominant.
Nima- Maybe it is true. Because there was no clear policy and there was no team with defined duties. As we had no budget the procedure were naturally formed. But to me this has been decreased now.

It is the problem of most of Persian websites as they have no income. Anyway, did you have a special program for events like book fair as a grand cultural event?
Nima- We had news about it but there was not a serious job. What we consider is for example supporting website of book fair as an important event like yahoo that have supported World cup website.

Do you have any plans for future?
Nima- Our plan for the seventh year is that Mypendar website that is testing starts seriously. This website is a personal portal that a part of it is an RSS reader. I want to practice the first idea I had for Pendar that is every morning each operator follows his online needs from Mypendar; to read news, select a diet, etc.

How did the idea form? Do you have foreign models?
Nima- It is a combination of my yahoo and my google. But there are appropriate tools for Iranian operators.

What is your predict an ideal for this program?
Nima- We want to gain ten thousand members. Those people who register in Pendar and Mypendar societies become a member of conceptual society of Pendar. There are some services provided to them free of charge. If we contact with our operators more we can provide more services to them. We want to get some services from cultural centers and present it to our operators. This can be discount in cinema ticket, holding cultural sessions, traveling or educational workshops. The next system that is going to start before the seventh year is a news reader, like websites with high application as Google news and also Persian versions of Parsik and Sarekhat- with more facilities comparing to the last two ones. Another program is letter website of Pendar that is a source for Persian websites. At the moment it is only introducing the websites. In future there will be ranking and analysis.

As I know Nima you were the third web logger after Salman Jariri and Hosein Derakhshan. As the last question it is not bad to tell us why you didn’t continue your web log and, what were the effects of development of web logs on Pendar.
Nima- I have come to the point that I had to write my web log everyday or to work on Pendar. I found that in age of 20 I will not have useful exit after a while and I decided to stop my web log although I was the third web logger and I have good number of visitors. On effect of web logs on Pendar, at first it was good for it. We linked to different web logs and became a source of cultural web logs. After a while web logs became strong and being a source for them was taken from websites as Pendar and Gooya. Anyhow I am thinking about it once again. Maybe I start a web log soon, but this time a photo blog.